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I have a confession; I love makeup. Oh, so you knew already? Oh, it’s one of the most frequently used tags on my blog? Oh yeah, I did write a love letter to an eyeshadow palette not too long ago, right…

But hey, we all have our weaknesses, right? Within the whole makeup spectrum, for me, it’s eyeshadows. I love eyeshadows. Love them. And with that love, comes a certain longing for buying more of them, hoarding them, rolling around in… okay, maybe it’s not THAT bad. But the MOAR-tendencies are there.

It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I actually got into eyeshadows and makeup really, when my skin finally stopped being SO oily. Before that, I had a couple of them but usually just used an olive green or turquoise without accent colours and then eyeliner, and if it melted right off my face before I got home, it didn’t matter.

Since then, with the improvement of primers (that I’ve used since the 90’s because IsaDora, the Swedish brand, has had them since forever?) and my skin chilling out, my love for eyeshadows has increased in intensity along with my ability to play around with them and manage to do looks that actually last all day until I wash it off at night.

And with that, my collection increased with more colours, nuances, finishes, qualities. And while I sort of regularly cleared out all the other categories of makeup, the eyeshadows just kind of stayed put, being tucked away in “I’ll look at these later on”-palettes. Then having experimented lots for a few years, I have just settled on that I won’t use crazy colours but prefer the more muted nuances and I got overwhelmed with all the fricking shadows I had.

Decluttering

Apparently, I’m a crazy person that has deleted the pictures from my previous declutters, I did a real proper one like a year before the one I’m about to show you. This last one is from March this year, and just two weeks ago I took everything I was supposed to give away to my sister’s house and just HERE TAKE IT.

After giving away two palettes right away, I started going over the ones I had left.

Ahhh. So good! All the shades with glitter in them that I loathe, all the really colourful ones, dupes of ones that I love and really old ones that I just threw away, gone!

What’s left?

I’m so happy with my collection now. I have a couple of unused shadows, the rest are tried and loved even though some are put to harder use than others.

It’s a lot less than I had before, but here we come to the actual point of this post:These eyeshadows are gonna last me for YEARS. I know, I know, hygiene etc etc, but I’m gonna be one of those people who use my powder eyeshadows until they’re used up or start to turn. Before that, I’m neverminding how old they are unless they’re REALLY old (like the green one I had that I bought when I was 16, ahem). I've kept the ones that I’ve used a lot and gave away all the others, so my collection now is tried and true.

I usually put makeup on five or six times a week, and dip into eyeshadows every single one of those days, and here’s how my well-loved, well used eyeshadows look today;

I have bought these ones around two and four years ago, and I've been using them TO DEATH. Well, not to death, because you can see how much is still left inspite of my almost daily use.

This palette I bought two and a half years ago, and I've been using it SO much. Still, it's like "whatever" apart from the big shade to the right that I've actually hit pan on, but that's mostly because I dip the same spot every time..

And then my latest love, that I wrote enthusiastically about in March of this year when I bought it. This too is used again and again and almost isn't showing any signs of use.

The point of this post is remind myself of how I don't need to buy new shades. I have everything I want, even though I will surely fall into the "ooh pretty"-trap again. That's okay, but I will continue comparing my collection with the new lovers to stop myself from giving in. And maybe this post can demonstrate to the world how efficiently eyeshadows can wear. In two years time, I'll do a comparison. They'll probably look about the same, haha.

Do you have any collecting tendencies and in that case, what can't you just give up?

Rolling out of bed Thursday morning, I wasn’t at all prepared for the summer that would ensue. Sure, it’s been summer in Sweden for like twelve weeks by now, which isn’t normal I might add, but when you enter an old gasometer for a music gig that revolves mainly around hell on earth, the sensation of actually BEING in hell was at least setting the mood.

When stepping through the entrance to the gasometer, it was like being covered by a blanket of a moist, dense condensation of human flesh and sunsweaty skin, with subtle hints of beer, camping and electronic equipment ready to malfunction at any second in the pressing heat.

The emergency exits stood open at all times, if anyone inside would decide that enough is enough and throw themselves out through the door to meet a slightly different kind of heat, with less hints of skin and more hints of dead grass, melting pavement and old mud tiles slowly wishing they could seize to exist in the setting sun. Fortunately, two stages were outside and merely one in the depths of hell inside.

Don't let the clouds excite you. They released like two drops of rain the entire weekend.

A few days before the festival started, we concluded that the amounts of alcohol consumed would go through the roof with the promised perfect hanging outdoors-weather and that it would turn into one so called Off Our Faces Metal Festival, metal optional if you manage to actually locate the stage where your favourite band plays. But! Instead, I experienced a pretty sober festival, with my theory being that the frying sun took the edge off the usual metalhead stamina, seeing as there was no actual place to hang out in the shade.

I mean, metalheads ARE my peeps, my peoples, but hell, they’re drunk on outings. Very drunk. And I would lie to you guys if I denied waking up Friday morning after the pre-party, experiencing a roller coaster when turning sides in my bed after a night heavily laden with tequila, beer, cider and hey, why not a little vodka to go with that? In my defense, I had only slept two hours the night between Wednesday and Thursday and instead of a nap on Thursday I got dragged out to the fringe parts of town and forced into a stream. Well, by forced I mean “I’m dying from heat exposure and that brown piece of water looks good to me even though it’s upriver from a beach that is too dirty to swim at”.

Ahem.

Anyways, on Thursday night this year, there was a warm up with the promised last gig of a cult classic band for my generation of metal- and non-metal fans, The Kristet Utseende. Their music is pretty much about genitals and a little bit about religion, drugs, alcohol and other racy subjects in a punk fashion. Yeah, I don’t get it either but whatever.

Then on Friday and Saturday the real festival commenced, lining up band after band of the metal persuasion. This year, I only had three bands I wanted to actually see, and then a couple of others that I could enjoy at a distance while feeding on onion rings or rolling around on the only little patch of dying grass that exists on the area of the festival.

I'm always in for a piece of At the Gates, one of the best bands out there! The thumping bass triggered my hangover though, so half the gig I watched from a distance. Hrm...

Angry Finns, yes!

And then of course my peeps in Apocalypse Orchestra with their doomy doomyness and flagellant and everything (not in view)!

All in all, it was a lovely festival with lots of people, new and old friends and acquaintances, lots of beer, lots of hangovers (2½ in three days) and lots of loud music and an unflinching torment from the ball of fire in the sky. It was really nice, is what I am trying to say! A couple of years ago it rained so much that I couldn’t even take out my phone to take a commemorative picture of the bands playing, fearing it would drown and die, so I prefer this kind of weather if I have to choose..

After this entire post about the festival itself being only about weather, I should add that I do realize that there are a lot of places in the world that easily outheat themselves in comparison to Sweden, but sporting temperatures of around 31C/almost 90F for weeks isn’t normal. Us pleb citizens have no means to shelter ourselves at home with fancy stuff like AC. I mean, Swedes spend like 10½ months of every year trying our best to keep the damn heat IN, not OUT. And in my defense, even the tattooer visiting my boss, a native to India, questioned what the fuck is going on with the temperatures here. “I mean, I’m used to it but this doesn’t feel like 31 degrees at all! At least 35-36!”.

Last week, I made my ten hour way south to participate in my sister's wedding. They finally decided to get it done after twelve years together. It was an intense weekend and I brought one of my best friends for my plus one because I have a complicated love life, haha. The weather was lovely (you never know with the Swedish summer) and it was such a loving atmosphere.

The ceremony took place in a castle ruin out in a lake, and then the festivities took place in my sister's and her now husband's garden, complete with a bar and personnel, and a very popular man professionally handling the BBQ. The polaroid camera was sent around and everyone wrote their well-wishes, speeches were held and food was happily eaten. All in all, a very nice experience!

Before the wedding we went sightseeing a little and crashed another wedding. Maybe you can't see it, but all the men in suits were staring at us when I took the picture.

Kronoberg's castle was the site for the wedding. Having been used and built on since at least the 14th century, it has been in ruin since the 17th century. And of course, like all old places in the southern half of Sweden, the Danish torched it at one time.

On the way home we stopped for a bit of air at another ruin, Brahehus, a 17th century dwelling wonderfully placed upon the cliff side, overlooking the lake Vättern. I dropped my phone and got my first dents ever in a mobile screen, but I guess it's fine because it was ON the ruin. If I'm gonna drop my phone on anything, it's a ruin, right?

All this makes me want to move south because I just love this part of Sweden.

So, I can with great joy proclaim my survival of Midsummer’s Eve in God’s year 2018!

I mean, one guy did almost die but that’s expected when shoving 16 people together in a house in the countryside, having brought twice as many bottles of schnapps than there are people. The weather was as usual too, aka surprisingly cold considering the days before and after Midsummer’s, as if just planning to dance around the pole manages to invoke the rain gods, leaving all the little frog hoppers jump through the drizzle in order to make their children happy with its traditional midsummeryness.

It was a joyful experience, banqueting on great food and schnapps, mingling and talking to old and new acquaintances about everything from the simple things to bigger questions in life well into the night.

The darkest that the early summer night gets in the center-ish of Sweden. Magic every year.

I’m so grateful to have made a bunch of new friends these last few years since I moved home, it’s such a silver lining in addition to all the things I have to be happy about.

This coming Friday, it is Midsummer’s Eve. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept of a Swedish Midsummer’s Eve, I can tell you that it’s the national day for getting eaten alive by mosquitos, “involuntarily” drinking schnapps flavored with elderflowers (even though our fathers does not smell of the berries), BBQing whatever we can get our hands on from the trashed half empty shelves of anything BBQable in the stores and being outside in dresses and shorts even though it’s just a few degrees above freezing come sunset.

Imagine a country full of self-controlled people that lives in the darkness and cold of the north for eight months every year. Then imagine there being quite a lot of the heathen ways left, in spite of Christianity’s tries to subdue them. Most of our holidays are Christian (somewhat) in origin and we, as a pure and godly collection of folks, of course use the days off of work to get pissed in public. But Midsummer’s is a little bit different.

Firstly, it’s our only holiday of any weight during the summer months. So not only do we get off of our faces in public, we also get to accept our heathen spirits that still roam these lands and give ourselves the opportunity to flee out into the countryside and have sex outside because it’s tradition to do so (some people are denying this, I don’t know why?). All the while freezing to death and being eaten alive by mosquitos, of course. That act of survival is a vital ingredient in any early-to-late night outdoor activity in Sweden. Why one should have sex outside on the night that the sun nearly doesn’t set at all and gives you the absolute minimum of darkness to protect your privacy I don’t know, but hey, it’s tradition after all!

As dark as the night gets. It's kind of magic really.

As you can tell, it’s obviously the finest holiday of them all and of course, everything I’m telling you is true (except for the sex part, but one can wish, right!). Also, everything you've heard about people jumping around a pole like little frogs are true. Only parents though, and their kids. The rest of us stands around in the background, happy that we don't have to.

Now, I don’t have a set tradition apart from the aforementioned BBQ and schnapps, I just jump on whatever location being offered that the drinking and BBQing (how about some halloumi rolled in chili flakes, ugh so good!) can take place with nice folks. This year I’m shipping myself off to a country side dwelling about an hour away from town with a bunch of people ranging from friends to strangers, to eat and drink a lot during 26 hours.

Yes my friends! I've dwelled on this, what header I should use. I wanted to use my old style of header, with my home and changing it up with the seasons because it's fun and I get to draw silly things but thought I'd already had that and maybe I should go another route?

But when almost a year have passed and I hadn't found anything that have inspired me to make another style of header, I'm just going with what I still want. Simple, ey?

So, here it is! Some of you may recognise it well and the rest of you, well, it's a somewhat accurate representation of my dwelling and what goes on in it. It's not quite finished, the shelf is empty and so on but I can't help myself so I'm posting it now anyways!

So, I live in a small apartment. And I mean small. It's a dainty 28 square meters or 300 square feet. And even though the smallness has its challenges, I really love my little pad with its bed alcove and glazed balcony. I love having everything close by and all the things I feel makes a home, visible.

Also, having everything in view all the time makes the goldfish-span-of-attention-me actually remember that I have the things and makes me use them more often. Naturally, open storage is my thing. Also naturally, having such a small space to work with, I have to be quite efficient. I wanted to replace my bulky computer table and get rid of a small table on which I had the sewing machine. I gave away the shelf where I had my books so… that was clever…

Even though I had a computer space, I still had nowhere to put my printer or the little speaker for my computer, or my headphones for the nights when I want to listen to really loud music after 10 PM. I had no craft space and nowhere to let the future projects make their presence known and I had nowhere to put the coffee maker. I wanted lighting around my workspace. I wanted a space for charging my electronics without them being in the way on tables or worktops.

And yeah, I had random stuff that had no place and when you’re living small with lots of stuff, shit needs a home. Needless to say, I needed to update my apartment. And boy did I!

May the chaos commence!

I ordered home delivery, and Ikea's Ivar was delivered! I chose the tallest gables, 220cm's/86 inches just to cram as much efficiency in it as possible.

Now, I couldn't have it in its natural scandinavian blonde wood finish, so I stained it a coffee-ish colour instead. It sucked and it smelled, but the result is great!

The "chaos behind the scenes"-photo is on me!

Then I just tried everything out and moved things around until I was quite pleased, and then clicked stuff into place.

And, tada! It's messy, I have work spaces, it's lighted, it's a pretty aged brown colour, it swallows masses of things, it has electrical sockets and leaves no cords on the floor to collect dust that make me angry while vaccuuming - essentially everything I need in storage! It serves as handbag hanger that doesn't fit my miniscule hallway and a space for kitchen towels too.

Retractable surfaces so I don't need to waste that space when not sitting by the computer/crafting. It's not the prettiest but who cares!

Ellet

Welcome to my blog!

I'm a 30-something that go under the name Ellet. I'm from Sweden and I like old things, DIY's, small projects, ranting, reflecting and throwing on makeup to the sound of podcasts. Here I just gather random stuff from my life that I think is worth saying out loud or just saving for myself. I haven't gotten very far yet but feel free to look around!